Central Asia’s summit season, measured in money

Every major power now has its own summit with the five Central Asian states. The EU held its first in Samarkand in April 2025. China held its second in Astana in June 2025, and the United States marked ten years of the C5+1 at the White House that November. Russia keeps its own summit track with the five. Each produced a headline number or a headline document. Read together, the numbers say less than they appear to, because they are not the same kind of thing. The useful question is not who pledged most but which pledges have become signed contracts, and what the region is building for itself in the meantime.

The EU’s €12bn is mostly other people’s balance sheets

The Samarkand package was presented as €12bn under Global Gateway: €6.4bn for hydropower and climate, €3bn for transport, €2.5bn for critical raw materials and €100m for satellite internet. Ursula von der Leyen called it a Team Europe approach that would launch a new pipeline of projects. That wording matters. The figure combines the EU budget, member states and the development banks, and no split between them was published.

The banks’ own statements show how much of it is lending that would be counted anyway. The EBRD said it intended to develop a project package of around €7–8bn by 2027, focused on critical raw materials and renewable energy. The EIB said it would sign four memorandums of understanding with Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan and allocate €365m for transport, water and climate resilience. Memorandums are not loans, and €365m is three per cent of the headline.

The EBRD’s reported results give the only hard annual figure. In 2025 it invested €1.72bn across Central Asia and Mongolia through 120 projects, which it called one of its strongest regional results in more than a decade. Uzbekistan took €880m, Kazakhstan €378m, the Kyrgyz Republic €183m and Tajikistan €88m. That is about €1.53bn for the four Central Asian countries listed, and close to 68 per cent of the bank’s regional lending supported private business. At that pace, a €7–8bn package by 2027 needs annual volumes to rise sharply. It also means the bulk of what Samarkand announced is commercial and sovereign lending on normal terms, not grant money.

Transport shows the same pattern at smaller scale. The Samarkand package counted €3bn for transport. When commissioners travelled to Uzbekistan in late November 2025 for the Trans-Caspian transport investors forum, the new money the Commission itself specified was €15m for trade facilitation and customs digitalisation, alongside support for feasibility studies with the World Bank and the EBRD. Its own summary described investments announced, not contracts signed. Studies are a necessary step. They are not a corridor.

Washington’s deals are real companies at an early stage

The November 2025 C5+1 summit moved the format from dialogue to transactions. The Commerce Department ran a “Deal Zone” it put at over $25bn, and reporting placed Kazakhstan’s agreements alone above $17bn. The Kazakh figure spans all sectors combined. Neither total is a measure of money spent.

The flagship minerals deal is a fair test. Cove Capital and the state miner Tau-Ken Samruk announced a tungsten venture at the Northern Katpar and Upper Kairakty deposits with a project scope of about $1.1bn, split 70/30 between the US company and the Kazakh side. The Export-Import Bank issued a letter of interest of about $900m. Such a letter is indicative and non-binding: it opens due diligence and commits no money. That is a normal first step for a mining project. It is also a long way from the construction finance the summit coverage implied, and it places first production years away.

China pledges little and trades a great deal

China’s Astana summit was the least generous in headline terms. Xi Jinping offered 3,000 training places over two years and new centres for poverty reduction, education exchange and desertification control. The main document was political: a treaty on eternal good-neighbourliness, friendship and cooperation, alongside 12 cooperation documents covering the Belt and Road, green minerals, trade, connectivity and customs.

The money flows elsewhere. China’s trade with the five reached a record $106.3bn in 2025, up 12 per cent, with $71.2bn of Chinese exports and $35.1bn of imports from the region. Chinese customs data and Central Asian national statistics have not always matched, so the precise figure should be treated with some caution. But no summit pledge from any partner comes close to that scale. China has not needed a headline package, because its commercial presence already does the work that the others are trying to announce into being.

Russia’s summitry with the five has not come with a quantified financing package that we could find. Moscow’s weight in the region rests on labour migration, security ties and existing trade, not on new pledges.

The region’s own format is building institutions

The most consequential format may be the one without an outside power. At the seventh Consultative Meeting of Central Asian heads of state in Tashkent in November 2025, the leaders unanimously admitted Azerbaijan as a full participant. The meeting also took up a regional security concept with a catalogue of risks, a proposed trade and economic cooperation programme to 2035 and a plan to turn the format into a Community of Central Asia with a secretariat.

The leaders’ meeting at Cholpon-Ata on Issyk-Kul in July 2026 produced treaties rather than totals. Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan signed a treaty on allied relations together with agreements on border sections and shared water. Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan signed their own treaty and doubled the capital of their joint development fund from $100m to $200m. These are small sums. They are also committed sums, with named counterparts, which is more than most of the larger announcements can say.

Azerbaijan’s entry matters for the external formats too. It links the Consultative Meeting to the Trans-Caspian route that the EU is paying to study. It also gives Baku a seat where Central Asian governments settle their own positions before they meet Brussels, Washington or Beijing.

What to watch

The next Consultative Meeting, now including Azerbaijan, is set for Turkmenistan on 8 October. The test is whether the secretariat and the 2035 trade programme move from proposal to adoption. For the outside powers, the indicators are plainer. For the EU, it is EBRD and EIB signings in the region in 2026 against the €7–8bn target. For the US, it is whether EXIM and the other federal lenders move from letters of interest to committed finance once the tungsten feasibility work is done. For China, it is the 2026 trade figure. Summit totals will keep growing. Contracts and disbursements are the numbers worth tracking.

Sources

• Gazeta.uz — EU to allocate €12 billion investment package for Central Asia in four areas (5 April 2025)
• EBRD — EBRD invests almost US$ 2 billion in Central Asia and Mongolia in 2025 (30 January 2026)
• European Commission, International Partnerships — Global Gateway in Central Asia: Commissioners advance economic partnerships and cross-regional connectivity (December 2025)
• The Times of Central Asia — Washington shifts C5+1 from diplomacy to deals
• The Astana Times — China–Central Asia trade hits record $106 billion in 2025 (21 January 2026)
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China — Xi Jinping attends the Second China-Central Asia Summit and delivers a keynote speech (17 June 2025)
• Gazeta.uz — Azerbaijan joins format of Consultative Meeting of Central Asian heads of states (16 November 2025)
• The Times of Central Asia — Central Asia and Azerbaijan: what the region’s leaders agreed at Issyk-Kul (31 July 2026)